For years, BBM was one of the most popular instant-messaging tools in several countries, particularly in the developing world. In fast-growing countries like Indonesia and Nigeria, BBM dominated the messaging landscape. Pop stars wrote songs about it.

But other messaging apps have since overtaken BBM. WhatsApp, for instance, has 450 million monthly active users and is adding a million new users a day, according to the company. BBM has around 80 million monthly actives users, about half of whom don’t use the app on BlackBerry’s smartphones. (In 2012, there were 55 million monthly active BBM users on BlackBerry devices).

Still, even as BlackBerry’s core smartphone business was crumbling, BBM was considered a bright spot. This past summer, BlackBerry executives considered spinning off BBM into into its own company. Internally, executives referred to the unit as BBM Inc. The messaging app’s prospects routinely came up in news about possible BlackBerry buyers.

Now that WhatsApp has Facebook’s marketing might behind it, does BBM stand a chance?

It’s unclear how BlackBerry plans to catch up to other messaging apps like WhatsApp, or whether it will take BBM in a different direction entirely.

This fall, after years of internal deliberation and as it became clear that sales of its devices had collapsed, BlackBerry made BBM available to iPhone and Android users. That led to an early surge of downloads, but numbers have tapered off since. Adding to this uncertainty, BlackBerry’s executive in charge of BBM, Andrew Bocking, left earlier this month.

The man now in charge of BBM, John Sims, runs the company’s enterprise business. That might provide one possible road for BBM. John Chen, BlackBerry’s chief executive, has said he plans to make BBM a more enterprise-focused messaging tool, though he hasn’t provided any details about how he plans to do this.

Whatever BBM’s future, investors think there’s an upside for BlackBerry. After the Facebook-WhatsApp deal was announced, shares of BlackBerry jumped as much as 8% in after hours trading.

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Canada Real Time provides insight and analysis into what’s making news in Canada, a country punching above its weight on the world stage thanks to its vast resources and strong banking sector. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, we take a look at developments in fields ranging from business to politics to culture. You can contact the editors at canadaeditors@dowjones.com